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Indians Plan Rebirth for 5th-Century University

Sam Manekshaw

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Amartya Sen first saw the colossal, red-brick ruins of Nalanda University at the age of 11. After he told his family that he wanted to be a professor, his grandfather took him to see the remains of what is described as India’s oldest university, a place where history has the cast of epic myth.

Founded in the fifth century, Nalanda at its peak attracted some 10,000 students from across Asia to study Buddhism, law, literature, and philosophy. It is said to have been the first global institution of higher learning — and, Indians note, one created long before the development of universities in Europe.

Mr. Sen, the Harvard economist and Nobel laureate, is now part of an effort to capitalize on Nalanda’s legacy by building a new university with the same name, not far from the original site, in what is now the northeastern state of Bihar. The rebuilt Nalanda University would be a graduate-level institution, meant to bring the latest research and teaching practices to the country. It is set up as a quasi-public university, receiving government funds but freed from some national and state rules to give it more flexibility.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education

The plans, however, have been complicated by myriad obstacles. The university’s construction and opening have faced delays because of bureaucracy. The local news media have questioned the role of international academics. Others speculate that the venture is simply too ambitious to succeed — a point that Mr. Sen and other organizers disagree with.

"Our idea is not gigantic,” Mr. Sen, who heads Nalanda’s governing board, said in an interview. "It is to have a university which would be of high quality, which would be Asian in tradition and concentration.”

While India’s education and social needs are vast, and one institution will hardly solve them all, he said, Nalanda will fill an important role in India.

"We need education, we need health care, we need scientific research, and we need everything from elementary immunization of children to high-level medical expertise and skill,” Mr. Sen said. "We also need a connection with our own history, because it has an inspirational quality and is indeed something to learn from.”

In 2006, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, then India’s president, first proposed the plan to revive Nalanda, and the project has steadily gained international support. Besides Mr. Sen, the other 11 members of governing board include academics from top universities in Britain, China, Singapore, the United States, and Thailand.

The Indian Parliament passed a bill in 2010 authorizing the development of the university. The government pledged more than $330 million to the project; other governments, including those of China and Australia, have each pledged $1 million; Singapore promised up to $7 million to build a library.

Nalanda is expected to open in September, with about 40 students taking courses in history and environmental studies. The university eventually plans to enroll over 2,000 students, with programs in Buddhist studies, philosophy, linguistics, literature, international relations, information science and technology, economics, and management.

Organizers hope that graduate students will come from all over the world for experiences that are like those of a field school — doing ecological research in nearby villages, for example.

Because of delays, however, no faculty members have been hired, and the university still consists of only a converted government compound. Bihar has allocated 450 acres of rice paddies and wheat fields for a state-of-the-art campus, but parliamentary meetings and financial reviews have delayed construction.

Part of the problem is that members of Parliament and other government officials seem taken aback by the level of autonomy the university seeks. Among other plans, Nalanda wants a professor-student ratio of one to five, while the University Grants Commission, which regulates India’s federal universities but will not oversee Nalanda, said a higher ratio, 15 to 20 students per instructor, would be suitable.

Gopa Sabharwal, the university’s vice chancellor, has argued that India needs to throw out the rule book if it wants to forge a top-tier research institution.

"There’s never a precedent for someone who does something the first time around,” she said.

Some Indian academics have also criticized the salaries that the university wants to offer, taking issue with the vice chancellor’s salary of almost $100,000, an unheard-of amount at Indian universities.

Ms. Sabharwal has agreed to a salary 60 percent lower than originally offered, in part to deflect criticism. But without being able to set faculty pay higher than that at India’s public universities, Nalanda will have trouble attracting top talent, she said.

"There’s very little incentive in our university system for someone who’s good, young, eager and more productive to get fast-tracked to professorship,” Ms. Sabharwal said.

The local news media have given substantial coverage to such controversies, making the debate over Nalanda a very public issue.

Nalanda’s challenges mirror in some ways the problems that American universities have faced in trying to establish branch campuses and other academic programs in India. While the university has backing from Indians, there is also a perception that it is largely a foreign-led project.

Ramachandra Guha, a historian whose name was mentioned as an early candidate for vice chancellor, declined to comment on Nalanda specifically but wrote in an email, "India needs many top-tier, international-caliber research universities, not just one.”

"These, however, have to be built from the bottom up, by mentors and scholars based in different parts of the country (not abroad), aided by Indian philanthropists and/or public funds,” Mr. Guha added.

Pramath Raj Sinha, the founding dean of the Indian School of Business, who is setting up a private liberal-arts college, Ashoka University, is sympathetic to Nalanda’s circumstances. But the price tag for starting a top graduate research university from scratch, he said, may be too high.

"It’s like saying you’d set up Harvard without the undergraduate institution,” Mr. Sinha said. "Education is really a money business, and if they want to make a mark on the world with research, they will need funding.”

Mr. Sen defended Nalanda’s goals, arguing that ambitious ideas are what India needs to move forward.

"Our problem,” he said, "has always been to cut through the barrier of people who think too small rather than too big.”

Indians Plan Rebirth for 5th-Century University
 
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This is a very ambitious project.Anyone has an idea how they are going to fund the project??
 
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This is a very ambitious project.Anyone has an idea how they are going to fund the project??
Nalanda University bags Rs 2,727.10 crore financial support

Nalanda University, which is set to begin its first academic session in 2014, has bagged a Rs 2,727.10 crore proposal for financial support over a period of 12 years (2010-11 to 2021-22) approved by The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs.

Out of the Rs 2,727.10 crore, Rs 1,749.65 will be used to fulfill the capital cost of the project whereas Rs 977.45 crore will be diverted towards the University's recurring expenditure for a period of eight years from 2014-15 to 2021-22.

The main University campus which fosters housing facilities for the teaching and non-teaching staff is being constructed on a 455 acres plot. The plot has been leased out by the Bihar Government, free of cost, for 99 years.

Adding to the funds received from the Indian government, the University has received voluntary contributions from countries such as China, Thailand and Laos which account to US$ 11.55 lakh. Along with monetary help, the University has also received contributions to aid its infrastructural development. Singapore has offered to build a library at a cost of US$ 5 million.

Japan has guaranteed assistance to renovate the highways leading to the University whereas Australia has committed Australian $1 million for a Chair in the School of Ecology and Environment Studies.

The University will start chipping in its share towards the recurring expenditure once it starts generating funds after teaching begins. It will also receive endowments through public-private partnerships; an Endowments Committee has been constituted to raise funds through the same.

Nalanda University, which the Government of India looks forward to establish as an international institution of excellence, is expected to benefit 2,450 Indian and foreign students by the end of 2021-22.

The academic session in the first two schools of the University will commence from leased premises in September, 2014. Full fledged teaching in all the 7 schools will begin in 2017. The international status of the University was enforced by an Inter-governmental Memorandum of Understanding which was effective from October, 2013. A Headquarters Agreement granting privileges and immunities to the academic staff has been signed between the Government of India and Nalanda University in July, 2013 to facilitate hiring of the best faculty from across the world.

Nalanda University bags Rs 2,727.10 crore financial support : News
 
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The problem has more to do with Bihar than the University itself. Bring up a national level university in Bihar, good enough to convince kids all over India to come to Bihar is in itself a gigantic task let alone international folks.

Lets see how things turn up but i ain't betting high on this one.:D
 
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The problem has more to do with Bihar than the University itself. Bring up a national level university in Bihar, good enough to convince kids all over India to come to Bihar is in itself a gigantic task let alone international folks.

Lets see how things turn up but i ain't betting high on this one.:D
Especially what will happen to the girl students??
 
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It will be awesome if they can pull it off. Great Grand-dad went to Heidelberg U. Name-brands are powerful....even in education. (Harvard, Oxford, etc.)
 
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Especially what will happen to the girl students??

bihar wih all its shortcomings .. is much safer than say Delhi!

The problem has more to do with Bihar than the University itself. Bring up a national level university in Bihar, good enough to convince kids all over India to come to Bihar is in itself a gigantic task let alone international folks.

Lets see how things turn up but i ain't betting high on this one.:D

at least it will prevent the migration of bihari students then !!
 
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Are you kidding me??

i am damn serious! check the crime rates. any way crimes in bihar has a lot of political and caste based overtones.. no one is bothered about students. One major possible threat was kidnapping.. but is now reduced to zero level. And bihar and jharkhand has many reputed institutions like IIT Patna, XLRI, ISM etc
 
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bihar wih all its shortcomings .. is much safer than say Delhi!
IMO its not right to compare a city with a state.

Secondly, Delhi is such a mess thanks to huge influx from UP, Bihar n Haryana.

at least it will prevent the migration of bihari students then !!

Hardworking students were never the problem but rather poor law n order stituation n poverty stricken masses.

Besides the point here is that their first priority should be setting a realistic goal for the university to meet the demands of masses n meeting industry expectations rather than buiding air castles.
 
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Bihar:rofl:

Don't compare with Delhi........ Wahaan case file hi nahi hoti to Ghanta kam to hoga hi na delhi se:taz:
 
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